#174: Together
Release Date: August 1st, 2025
Format: Theater (Cinemark Downey and XD in Downey, CA)
Written by: Michael Shanks
Directed by: Michael Shanks
4 Stars
Together is a tremendous film debut from Australian writer/director Michael Shanks. Following in the wake of another acclaimed body horror flick from just last year - Coralie Fargeat’s instant classic The Substance - Together confidently stakes a reputation of its own.
The story follows long-term partners Millie, a grade-school teacher, and Tim, an aspiring musician, as they move from the big city to a quiet town two hours away so Millie can take a new teaching job. While on a hike in the woods behind their new home, the two become lost and fall into a collapsed cave. Unable to escape, they’re forced to shelter in the cave overnight, which triggers a sinister phenomenon that will change their relationship forever.
Together is a showcase for Shanks’ surprisingly adept directorial instincts, considering his youth and inexperience. His visual compositions are quite affecting, he summons strong performances from his two leads Dave Franco and Allison Brie (real life husband and wife), and, most notably, he masters a consistent, dynamic mood. Yes, he achieves the requisite disgustingness of the body horror genre, and he’s devilishly raising the stakes as the story progresses, but there are also some unexpected laughs here. Shanks effectively slackens the tension from time to time, allowing the audience a reprieve from all the awfulness. Then, of course, he tightens the noose once more.
As good a director as he appears to be, I was just as impressed with his writing. The movie begins with Millie and Tim hosting a going away party; Tim is off in the corner, confiding to friends that he’s not so sure about this move; his musician friends imply that Millie might be purposely sabotaging his musical ambitions. Later in the evening, Millie awkwardly and unexpectedly proposes marriage to Tim in front of all their friends, and we, the audience, think, jeez, this poor guy. He’s leaving all his friends behind, as well as his career, to appease this seemingly suffocating girlfriend?
Not so fast. As the movie unfolds, so does our interpretation of Millie and Tim’s dynamics. Is Millie suffocating? Or is she just trying to find the best way to show her genuine love to a man who hasn’t figured out what he wants from life? Maybe Tim is seeding the relationship with feelings of doubt and uncertainty? Is he just too cowardly to decide what he wants? For a while I thought so, but then Shanks introduces a traumatic event from Tim’s past that deepens our understanding of just what might be going on between these two.
It really is a tight, well-written script. Shanks explores relationships, specifically codependent relationships, with a depth and sensitivity that defies the genre he’s working in. Like Millie and Tim, his film Together presents horror and codependent love as disgustingly inseparable.
